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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

AIBU to ask if you've been to the Keswick Pencil Museum?

323 replies

BlooferLady · 29/05/2011 19:11

Oh! Oh! I am HOWLING with laughter! Grin Grin

They have the most fantastic website - it's priceless, I can't see through my tears -

From 'Plan Your Visit' - "Explore the museum before you come and discover all the great things to see and do. You can journey through the history of pencils and pencil making!"

It's only a tenner for a family ticket but for £15 you can visit the bungalow museum as many times as you like during the year! Grin

And the cafe is called SKETCHERS!!!!!

And there's a genuinely spine-chilling wax doll stuck helplessly in a cavern underground - WTF is he doing, mining for those erasers you stick on the end???

Reassuringly, they can take large numbers, and there's a Drawing Zone where you can get hands-on with the pencils

Oh Lord I'm laughing so hard I've nearly thrown up my prawns - surely some MNetter has been there? Is it as AWESOME as it looks?!

OP posts:
saggarmakersbottomknocker · 29/05/2011 20:25

We've been to Keswick loads and I always wanted to go to the Pencil Museum but even the kids knew better and refused to go. Going again next week. To Keswick, not the museum.

I have been to the Marble Museum in Bovey Tracey, Devon. the children said it was torture. Apart from the Gift Shop.

Is there a Gift Shop at the Pencil Museum?

notcitrus · 29/05/2011 20:26

I was in Keswick in the rain recently and we dithered about the Pencil Museum - but concluded that if it looked crap even in the full-page glossy ads, it probably was. Sounds like we were right!

However, if one is in Istanbul, then the 'Illumination and Heating Appliances Museum' is a delightfully bonkers collection of random gas- and electric-powered widgets from down the years...

maras2 · 29/05/2011 20:31

S0mewhere in the Lake District we went to the rope museum.My DH would visit the feckin museum of dust if there was one.

MerylStrop · 29/05/2011 20:31

Oh my goodness saggar (I guess you're from Stoke where there are also some fine museums including the history of toilets display at Gladstone Pottery Museum where I once did work experience) - you've actually been to the legendary Marble World? I wasn't allowed to go there.

Nor the Campbell's Soup Factory Museum on our Disastrous Scottish Motoring Holiday. Nor Waltzing Waters at Newtonmore.

saggarmakersbottomknocker · 29/05/2011 20:34

Oh yes the toilets. Flushed with pride. Arf! And Clean and decent - that's the baths one.

280169 · 29/05/2011 20:35

i have ben twice, my kids and me like it,i love keswick and all of the lakes, best place on earth cars of the stars is also worth a visit

dracula museum at whitby omg what a rip off that was

pointydog · 29/05/2011 20:37

Aunty Mabel has been from 'Come Outside'. Seemed like fun.

PorkChopSter · 29/05/2011 20:42

Did she leave the dog behind? She's always leaving the dog behind.

LadyBeagleEyes · 29/05/2011 20:53

I should have remembered our local crap museum in our little village.
It's part of the National Trust and it is The Deer Museum.
What it actually is is a dingy tiny little room with various deer skulls, antlers and examples of deer parasites which are absolutely revolting.
They do have a herd of the live ones though.
No outdoor shops though, but we have a very nice cafe.
I can't believe Auntie Mabel is still on, she must have been around for years.
There's no way Pippin can still be alive.

posterofagirl · 29/05/2011 20:54

It is exactly as fucking brilliant as it's website!
We actually planned a weekend in the Lakes just to go there after it was highly recommended by freinds.
The spy pencils are excellent.

pointydog · 29/05/2011 21:01

I can't remember if Pippin was there. I was so enchanted by the pencils. I saw it years ago and still remnember it.

Pippin was probably outside in the rain tied to a lamp post.

Gargula · 29/05/2011 21:05

I went to Keswick between the ages of about 5 and 15 on an annual family holiday.

We were always threatened with the "pencil museum" if we misbehaved!

missismonky · 29/05/2011 21:08

I would love to go to the Pencil Museum. Aunty Mabel lives my dreams.

naturalbaby · 29/05/2011 21:11

I loved it, was thinking about going again now we have kiddiwinkles in tow. still have my 'free' pencil i got on admission. DH owes me a trip to Lakeland HQ so the pencil museum may have to move down the list of priorities.

DH dragged took me to see Donald Campbells grave a couple of years ago and there was a quaint little museum in the village.

Goldrill · 29/05/2011 21:15

ahem; small plugette. If you're bored in the rain in Keswick you could try the Puzzling Place. Considerably more fun than the weird cars thing and the pencil museum combined. Also, Keswick Museum has a collection of musical stones which are well worth a visit (yes, genuinely!). And if all else fails we also have a mining museum. It's amazing what you can find to make a tourist attraction out of when you have this much rain.

(I don't have shares in the puzzling place btw - run a backpackers in town and we spend a lot of time pointing people at stuff to do when it's soggy! (Other than go to the pub...))

starkadder · 29/05/2011 21:19

I'd rather go to Barometer World

zukiecat · 29/05/2011 21:36

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

PlanetEarth · 29/05/2011 21:37

I liked the pencil museum! And when you're camping in the Lakes and it's raining for the fourth day running, it's a good place to go.

Emo76 · 29/05/2011 21:39

I think someone has already mentioned the Southport Lawnmower Museum - unfortunately when we were in town for a wedding we didn't get a chance to visit. Tough call - wedding or lawnmower museum...?

HerRoyalNotness · 29/05/2011 21:40

We tried to go to the Potato Museum on Prince Edward Island, but it was closed when we pulled up. I do have a photo of myself next to a giant potato though Grin

I think we'll take in the Pencil Museum when we are over in July. We've always given it a miss but I think DS1 will enjoy it as he LOVES to use pencils as swords draw.

NonnoMum · 29/05/2011 21:49

Bloofer are you Patsy from Grease? Or the Catherine Tate character that spends all day larfing and larfing, at her own not-funny jokes?
Cos if you don't want to go the Pencil Museum, then don't go.

Stick to Thorpe Park then.

BosomForAPillow · 29/05/2011 21:56

I have been to the pencil museum. I thought a friend had said it was "more interesting than it sounds". But it turned out that she hadn't been and had actually said "Maybe it's more interesting than it sounds". It isn't.

ApocalypseCheeseToastie · 29/05/2011 21:57

Oh I live minutes away from the lake district, can't bloody stand the place, too many people mooching round too many shite shops searching for something to do, it's been over done imo, much prefer Wales.

And if you lot think the pencil museum is bad, Kendal has a shoe museum Shock ((which is free btw))

Original poster
BlooferLady · 29/05/2011 22:01

Crikey Nonno have you got PMT?! Confused

See now a shoe Museum has the Filipino dictator connection - I can imagine them making something out of that...

My father would be transfixed by the barometer museum as indeed would I

OP posts:
NonnoMum · 29/05/2011 22:03

PMT?

No. I haven't.

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